Bitter Fruit

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, the Ali family's broken relationships are on display in this miserable little novel.  The Bitter Fruit of the title is Silas Ali's warm beer of escape, white Kate and Julian's newborn democracy in which they are no longer wanted, and, most especially, Lydia Ali's son Mikey, born after her rape over 19 years ago.

Achmat Dangor's expression of all of this bitterness is in the various troubled sexual activities, encounters and desires of his cast of characters.  They include the violence of rape, the apathy of unwanted marital sex, inappropriate seduction between age groups, infidelity, homosexuality (female and male), and incestuous urges and actions of all kinds: father/daughter, mother/son and nephew/aunt.  After a while, these sexual encounters lost their shock value - and did not appear to have any other important value.  This theme seemed like a badly-contrived plot device in lieu of an actual story or compelling characters, and I was over it long before it was over.

Other themes that I might have found interesting emerged late in the story, including the amorphous definition of race and the plurality of religion possible within a single family in modern South Africa.  Perhaps because I was not a native reader, I had a hard time figuring out each characters racial identity - and I couldn't determine whether this was because of my ignorance in picking up on cues particular to the country, or whether it was intentional on behalf of Achmat Dangor.  Religions seemed a bit more obvious, and the way each character is liberated and  also confined by his or her religious upbringing was teased out nicely. However, it wasn't enough in the end to encourage me to care about the characters at the climax of the action, or to care about the unresolved pieces.

The Line of Beauty

For the patient reader, The Line of Beauty is a richly rewarding story.  One does not devour The Line of Beauty - it is to be slowly savored.  This was an adjustment for me.  I'm used to knowing I like a book because I can't put it down, the plot is so engrossing that, for a while, I forget my entire life.  This book provided a different sort of pleasure, and at the end see why this is a Booker book.

Aptly named Nick Guest is a visitor who never seems to manage to leave his stay in the home of a rich schoolmate with powerful connections.  Set in 1980's London against the political backdrop of the Thatcher era, I was a bit lost on the deeper meaning of some of the context (what's the difference between a Conservative and a Tory?  What did Margaret Thatcher actually do?  I was 1 year old when this novel opens).  The novel is divided into three sections spanning 4.5 years.  The first section centers on Nick's poignant first love affair - as a gay man.  Nick's innocence, his sense of the entire world before him, and his tenderness of first love and and first  physical experience are so real I found it captivating.  However, it is fair to say that very little actually happens in this first third, and I have read review after review suggesting that many people put the book down for good at the end of this section, disappointed with the novel.  Read on.

In the second section, a much more experienced Nick exposes an underside of the power and money high of the 80's - cocaine, anonymous partners, and greed and frivolous expense.  It is not until the third section that all of the characters Hollinghurst has painstakingly crafted reach their apex in glory or defeat.  And only through getting to know these characters in the slow, drawn-out way this novel has can the end be felt so emotionally.

Nick's uniting theme throughout his experience as a guest in the family is an abiding interest in beauty - beautiful things and beautiful people.  Experiencing beauty with someone else is how Nick prefers to communicate his deepest feelings.  And while the digressions on the actual line of beauty seemed contrived to me, the theme of obsession with temporal beauty in the context of the AIDS epidemic was appropriate and insightful.